You can't give a Gonski if you don't get Gonski

Gillard's take on Gonski is finally out for all to see. And it is a chacteristic Gillard take: all neatly wrapped up in her familiar populist rant and a carrots and sticks package. Look at it from her point of view: if she can get it over the line by giving those recalcitrant schools a serve, then she has a win – especially if she can minimize use of the 'e' (equity) word. Sure, the Gonski review saw inequity as the central concern – but no sense in scaring the horses from the bigger end of town.

In the process she may generate more than a little consternation in the ranks of an Opposition which is apparently committed not to having a bar of Gonski. Amidst all the current focus on Gillard and Gonski it is worth speculating on what education policy options are currently being contemplated by Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne.

They'll have a job on their hands to oppose or wind back forthcoming Gonski legislation. Within 12 hours of Gillard's announcement Fiona Nash, Deputy Nationals Leader in the Senate, was very favourably disposed towards Gonski in her comments on ABC Q&A. She certainly won't be the only one on her side of politics who will be aware of the weight of evidence and commentary supporting a change in the way we fund schools.

To broaden the appeal of her National Plan for School Improvement Gillard is including much of her tried and true school reform initiatives relating to teacher quality, school autonomy and transparency. The Gonski panel didn't get wildly excited about much of this – possibly because the benefits of autonomy and transparency are usually over hyped. And the whole package will also have an urgency to match the moral panic about us slipping down the international league table. By 2025 Shanghai and the rest of them will apparently queue up behind us.

The immediate purpose and effect will be to force Abbott and Pyne to oppose many things which have a natural fit in their own policy corner. Gillard can and will wedge the Opposition and be able to pitch its antagonism to Gonski as akin to disbelief in parenthood. The longer term problem for the Opposition is that, to change the (far distant) Gonski future, it will have to repeal legislation which will include many of its own preferred goodies.

It is a problem largely of Abbott and Pyne's making but one which isn't always characteristic of conservative parties. On education policy the Conservative Opposition in England frequently outflanked the Brown Labour Government by arming itself with positions usually promoted by the Left. In NSW Barry O'Farrell and Adrian Piccoli arguably did the same, in the process even cosying up to the NSW Teachers Federation. In both cases their form was somewhat reversed on achieving the government benches, far moreso in Britain than in NSW where Adrian Piccoli still warms the hearts of educators, potentially at his own risk in joint party rooms.

Not so the team of Abbott and Pyne who have matched Gillard and Garrett with similar policies built around populism, timidity as well as being relatively useless and deliberately distractive. In this competition the Government has always been on the front foot; where does a full-blooded take-no-prisoners conservative Opposition go?

The Opposition policy at the 2010 election provides some insight. The Opposition proposed fifteen policies about schools. Half of these (including rewarding teachers, school building, technology, chaplaincy, education tax rebates, My School) fall into the 'do it tougher or different' category. A couple (bullying, languages) represented sounded good. The only thing that was possibly new was an education card (did anyone say "voucher"?) for students with disabilities. Pyne recycled this one on the same day as Gillard's recent Gonski launch.

What else can they do? They can always attack management stumbles, matters of trivia and raise the inevitable cry of 'where is the money coming from'. Hence "school halls" are forever in the same sentence as "pink batts", the politics of distraction get a work-out, coupled with competing claims about the relative size of one's own surplus.

But they'll have to come up with a better policy if they want to combat the compelling narrative generated by the whole Gonski review process. Perhaps there are other policy options in any true-blue's kitbag. The Opposition's commitment to school autonomy can easily morph into charter schools, shortly about to be launched across the Tasman in New Zealand. The education card is a voucher by another name and targeted vouchers are a useful Trojan horse for bigger things to come. Tax rebates and/or tax deductibility can easily be extended to encompass portion or whole of school fees. And there is no end to headline announcements which characterize "school reform" in places such as England, where education policy has been portrayed by one writer as three announcements before breakfast.

The problem with the policies in the conservative kit bag is that few of them really seem to work without worsening equity problems. By itself that shouldn't stop them: the school reform bandwagon, regardless of who is holding the reins, is loaded with policy failures. Tax deductibility is regressive and will worsen our equity divides. Time and time again research shows insignificant differences between charter and other public schools. And we already have a de facto voucher system in the sense that money follows enrolments. The beneficial impacts of school autonomy are not significant while the downside equity risk has already been felt, even in Australia.

And the Opposition has other problems. Conservatives in Australia are running out of bogey-men. The Government is gripped by timidity, evidenced by the Prime Minister's fawn-fest before the Independent Schools Council of Australia conference a few weeks back. No dredging of her more radical statements from yesteryear seem to dent her image as a friend of private schools. In backing the Gonski recommendations the public school teacher unions have made themselves a very small target. Even the Greens fall well short of where public school advocates might like them to be.

No, they have to come up with a different narrative and policy. Christopher Pyne has given it a shot, and some of what he has been talking about is important, much of it coming from the Grattan Institute's Ben Jensen. He has focused on teacher quality, training and ongoing professional development, drawing on the (often misreported) example of Shanghai. And yes, teachers do need recognition for their work and do need to be treated as a profession. He has also questioned the focus on class sizes, although he needs to explain what is coming across as a commitment to increase them. Try telling that to teachers in disadvantaged schools and in early childhood where small classes are important.

Like most politicians he pitches his suggestions on the assumption that his ideas are new and can't be found in any existing school or system. Who can forget how Bob Carr single-handedly invented homework in the mid 1990s and Kevin Rudd must surely be the father of computers. But his narrative really comes apart on many important issues. In July he dismissed the idea of higher salaries for teachers although he recently changed his tune on that score. Perhaps he discovered that higher teacher salaries really are associated with high school system performance.

His pitch on equity is alarmingly wrong, claiming that "there isn't actually an issue in Australian schools that revolves around equity". He comes to this stunning conclusion by excluding the impact of school socio-educational status. Differences in school SES are created by the school choices of those with money to pay fees - and he certainly won't go find a problem in that. Sure, there are the residualised schools they leave behind, the argument goes - but it is their job to lift their remaining kids and their fault if they don't. Pyne and Gillard are driven by the same script. Says Christopher Pyne: "it's not about equity, it's about the outcomes of our poor students who aren't being given the right education in the first place."

After all, his narrative continues, "the greatest determinants of the outcome of students is the parental involvement in their children's lives at school". In this way he tries to skew the whole family/school equity issue to one of parental involvement which is, would you believe, more commonly found in autonomous schools. Hence, in his view of the world "it's about principal autonomy, it's about the independence that teachers have to teach, it's about governing council control of schools." He scores one of those three correct. As a consequence of all this "that's why in the non-government school systems students tend to perform better".

If Christopher Pyne has read the Gonski review and its contributing research then his statements are deliberately misleading. But it is kinder and probably more accurate to assume that he has not done his homework. Why should he? The education policy trail shows that statements of belief are far more powerful than statements of evidence for politicians of all colour. It is also far easier to find out about Gonski through the eyes of his preferred school system allies, keen to white-ant the findings, the recommendations and soon, the legislation.

In his comments about justice and each school sector's funding share he not only showed ignorance of Gonski but of the very nature of public and private education. School systems don't get a share of funding in proportion to their enrolment and never will. We don't have two comparable and competing systems with equal calls on funding. It is not some neo-liberal's fantasy. What we have is a public system with schools which must be available for all kids – and various private schools which might be available to some if they can jump through the hoops, especially represented by fees. The public funding needs of these two groups of schools are very different.

The shame of the Opposition's antics is that they have the potential to bury the whole school funding problem. What was a school sector-neutral report and the beginnings of a sector-neutral debate and search for sector-neutral solutions is now degenerating into more of the unproductive debate that we have had for decades. The risk that the Opposition faces is that attempts to undermine this important reform process is that there is now a critical mass of opinion and awareness about the issue that might pass harsh judgment on any political party that refuses to face up to the need for change.